So I went live with Spiceworks helpdesk portal there on Friday gone. I So far I have sent around a email to the company and the few users I thought would be ok to ask. I have asked to log a ticket for their call.

But I am wondering what ways have the pro's here trained their user base to log their own tickets. Our major issue here is time. There's me and one other supporting 3 Factory/office sites in Ireland and Belgium. So we dont have time to log tickets for all the calls we take. We can be away from the office for 6 hours at a time doing multiple calls, some in a factory environment. It be good to have the users logging a ticket when they need support as we are also in the process of moving to a new building. Meaning we will have a higher call volume as only two other departments are moving with us.

10 Replies

Blanket repetition, If it isn't stopping the user working when they call let them explain their problem and then say the line, "o.k not a problem, could you send in a ticket for that please." and make sure there are no exceptions to this rule.

You may need to explain how to send one in after that but that has generally worked for me :)

I failed miserably at this... Its depends on your staff, if there helpful team players you can ask them to do this, sit the forgetful ones down and explain how it saves everyone time. But if they dont want to, your left with only one option and that to make them and enforce it, with either a no ticket no job approach or some sort of disciplinary act for failing to do so. This will require the backing of higher ups etc.

So if you work with a nice bunch just see how it goes, and keep gently nudging them, when they ring up say youd be happy to help but could they put a ticket in as this will then allow for them to get regular updates etc.

If you start to get or anticipate people not getting on board then youll need to look to get made the law.

If they dont want to and you cant get it made mandatory... Well I havent cracked that one yet :(

I had it set up and did a full induction with the staff. I got them all to log on to laptops so they knew their login details, and then got them to find the icon that said IT helpdesk. I then explained how to login to the helpdesk system via a live demonstration on an interactive whiteboard.

They managed to login and i explained about the adding email address page and what benefits it gave them. I then got them all to send in a test ticket and they've been happy with it ever since.

After the demonstration and induction I left a copy of some notes in their pigeon holes so that they could always have a reference if they needed it

Firstly, do you have management buy-in towards a properly run helpdesk? If you don't, then GET IT. If you train your managers properly, then you can ignore anything that's not raised as a ticket - the ideal manager when confronted with a user complaining that you didn't fix their issue will open the conversation with "Did you raise a ticket about this?"

Secondly, do you have email tickets set up? Train your users to email in their issues, and make sure you give a better service when dealing with email tickets than you do otherwise. If that's not an option I'd suggest using the iphone/android/tablet apps to log them yourself.

Well make them understand that you can prioritize issues better, better track issues and, provide better feedback, and possibly have faster response if everyone uses the ticketing help desk system. Don't sell it as something that helps you, sell it to them as something that helps them.

Blanket repetition, If it isn't stopping the user working when they call let them explain their problem and then say the line, "o.k not a problem, could you send in a ticket for that please." and make sure there are no exceptions to this rule.

You may need to explain how to send one in after that but that has generally worked for me :)

Exactly, you need to enforce a zero tolerance rule to this. I've had people walk to my desk, ask me if i could help them. I let them explain the entire problem to me, and then asked them to send it to me in a ticket.

Generally though, make it appear that you're busy working on something and that you really can't fix it this second so you'll need a ticket.

I told my users it was to make us more accountable to management, most of them bought it.

Don't sell it as something that helps you, sell it to them as something that helps them.

Agree 100%.

Whenever anyone says anything to you, the first thing out of your mouth should be "have you sent in a support ticket?" If someone stops you in the hall and drags you to their office to explain the problem, you should just fill out a ticket from their machine. If they call, fill out a ticket in their name and make sure they get an alert email. If they stop you in the parking lot on the way to lunch, then tell them you will forget and they need to send a ticket. You might end up filling out a lot of tickets on behalf of the users at first, but eventually they'll get the hint.

You could take this a step further and just "forget" or "overlook" anyone who doesn't fill out a ticket. They'll pick up on the fact that tickets get fixed quickly and anything else doesn't.

Short version = skip the Portal at first, just use the Helpdesk email feature to begin with. People like email. Users should only call you if they can't email Support.

Explain to everyone that in order give everyone a better support experience, you're moving from a phone based system to an email/ticket based system. If they have a problem, they send an email SWhelpdeskaddress@yourcompany.com, which will automatically generate a ticket. Ticket alerts reach IT personnel wherever they are, via their email-capable phones. (and you can manage them using the mobile app)

IT will call tickets back or respond to tickets via email where appropriate. Users should only contact IT Support by phone if they are unable to send email (or, haha, their computer is literally on fire, haha).

If they call for any other reason, repond with "I'm sorry you're having a problem, but I'm - under someone else's desk rewiring/in a factory fixing a machine/driving/whatever - so I can't help you by phone right now. But if you email the Support address, I'll get to you as soon as I can."

As long as you make sure to give good, fast service on tickets, it will be be pretty easy to train everyone into a "if you don't send a ticket email, IT won't help you" policy. (You also might find that you're able to be a little bit nicer to everyone and give better service with the Helpdesk between you and users; so you'll improve the Support experience for both you and them).

Once you've built up some email-based tickets over time so you know what common user issues and quick fixes are, you can write some self-help articles, post useful links, write a few -runnable scripts, etc. and post them on the SW User Portal.

Then when you're visiting or having meetings with your various locations or users, you can do a little demo: "Hey, the email-based ticket system is working so great, we decided to enhance it. I'm going to give you all a desktop shortcut that takes you to our new IT Portal, where you can not only see all your tickets and make new ones, but also find blah blah blah. Email still works if you want to keep doing that, but this is even better."

Thanks for the good responses so far. I've already done the Icon on the desktop but it be a while before everyone has one. (alot of people dont log off or think locking the station is the same)

My next step is to do up a user document for it and be more "have you logged a ticket" Really I should have done up the Doc first. But I wanted to see what issues people had first and address them in it. So far the only issues seem to be "What domain user name and password is that" and "whats this profile thing, and why is my start date wrong, do HR think I started then!!!"

Other than that, the users who have been using it so far have been using it with out issue. I've used a few helpdesk systems in my time and I have to say I am impressed with how user friendly SW is. Cant wait to see what version 6 will bring.